Martin Landau Quotes

I do whatever I need to do to get into character. Sometimes it's being incredibly quiet, and sometimes it's being loose and goofy.

I'm interested in the acting and staging of specific emotions, and so I work with actors. It's a small proportion of what I do, but it's always what people seem to focus on.

I found it more challenging to act in a small scene, especially if it has no dialogue and if it is a close-up with only expressions.

Some people say, 'Do you have any theories on acting?' And I say, well maybe: I think you can start with zero and end with zero. You don't have to go anywhere, you don't have to go for the result.

So many actors get caught up in their technique, and to be honest, I see it really getting in the way. I see them forcing things. I definitely do my best work when I'm free of that. But I think as an actor, I work really hard in preparing the roles.

I told him that I can play it if he wanted to write it, and I would be willing to try and go there emotionally. I did not know as an actress if I would be able to get there, because when you feel really deep emotions or pain, you don't want to go back there.

But one of the hardest things for me to do was to access anger. I could do it on stage. But when I did it on film it was hard for me. That probably has to do with the intimacy of film. And my own personal issues with expressing anger. So I had to learn how to do that.

It's good for actors to confront those things we have to act: panic, pain and death.

I never like to go out of character when filming starts. I fear that if I do, I might not be able to pick it up again.

Your primary tools, as an actor, are observation and imagination. You can pretty much get everything you need from that, and you do. It brings back that element of pretend.

The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful - my personal life suffers.

When I go from a role with heavy prosthetic makeup, which I've done quite a bit of as well, and then do a role where I'm not wearing any, I have to be conscious of toning everything down. Because when you're wearing prosthetic makeup, of course, you have to really move your face a lot more to convey things through the makeup.

I think if you're an actor, then you can work on stage - but if you've never done it before, you're going to have picked up a few things that you're going to need to change when you're working on stage.

I don't do method acting. If I play a farmer, I'm not gonna spend 3 weeks on a chicken farm. That's a bit too much for me.

As an actor sometimes you can be a bit emotional and forceful, and that's not always the way to be.

It's very difficult for me to speak about being an actor.

And at NYU, I went to the Atlantic Theater Company, and they have two main points. One of them is to always be active in something instead of just feeling it. And the other is figuring out your character.

I think actors are brave souls that have to use parts of themselves that I'm just not comfortable doing anymore.

Sometimes you can just step into the character, and you get all your feelings and emotions just from sympathizing with her and being her. But then, other times, you just have to resort back to anything that you've been through in your own life and try to play that.

I can't act, and so I have to live that particular character in my real life and then exhibit it on screen.

In film, you're always using your tools, your body, your voice, your emotions, but onstage, you use them in a different way.

Writing and directing might be a red herring, and really I'm just re-examining what it is to act, to do it well and do it properly.

I don't believe there is any character that one can play for that long and not bring a piece of you to it.

I try to create as many circumstances outside of set that help me fall into character when I get onto set.

There were time when I was into method acting that I did have moments of residual character emotions, because the method bases your emotional responses as a character on emotional experiences from your real life.